UBS has joined Barclays in occupying an unenviable place on the list of banks to have been fined for rate rigging. But while the Swiss firm’s penalty dwarfs the one handed out to its UK peer in the summer, UBS may be spared the same reputational fallout.

Back in June, Barclays was slapped with a $450m fine by US and UK regulators for manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, and was promptly hauled over the coals by politicians and the public.

Any hopes that first-mover advantage would have eased its predicament were quashed when the Bank of England governor, Sir Mervyn King, effectively forced out the then Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond. Chief operating officer Jerry del Missier was next out of the door. Former chairman Marcus Agius also had expressed his intention to step down over the scandal.

Cue a round of appearances before a UK Treasury committee, much wound licking and a pledge to identify suitable replacements for Diamond and co who would change the “tone at the top” of Barclays.

This week, UBS stepped up to face the music with a $1.5bn settlement with UK, US and Swiss regulators over the manipulation of Libor and its European equivalent, Euribor, between 2005 and 2010.

The FSA’s final notice, published yesterday, showed a level of malpractice on a wider scale than Barclays in terms of its global reach and number of individuals involved. The FSA found misconduct to have occurred in countries around the world including Japan, Switzerland, the UK and the US.

So are the upper echelons of UBS under threat? It’s doubtful, as almost all of the senior staff who held C-suite status at the time of the wrongdoing have left the bank, largely because of numerous exits and top-level restructurings in recent years.

Former investment banking heads including Huw Jenkins (2005 – 2007), Jerker Johansson (2008 – 2009) and Alex Wilmot-Sitwell (2009 – 2012) are no longer with the bank. Carsten Kengeter (April 2009 – November 2012) is still with UBS, although has left the executive board to oversee the unwinding of the businesses and positions that the bank is exiting.

It’s a similar story for the position of global head of fixed income, currency, rates and commodities – which has changed six times since the fixing of Libor. The position is significant as it oversaw a team that housed traders responsible for setting dollar and euro Libor submissions from the start of 2005 until October 2008, according to the FSA’s final notice on the fine.

Christopher Wheeler, analyst at Mediobanca, said: “The good news is the whole management team that was around at that time has gone and hence more management churn is unlikely.

Andrew Lim, banks analyst at Espirito Santo Investment Bank, said: “Some people will have lost their jobs over this, but it is still not the case that this went up to board level.”

However, management may not get off completely. Wheeler added: “It may seem very unfair that the current management team take any pain for something that happened before their watch, in terms of their bonuses, but I think there will be the view that it is the right thing to do.”

The UK Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards also said it would take evidence on UBS’s involvement in rigging Libor early in the New Year. Chairman of the commission, Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, said that the scandal looked “even more appalling than Barclays”. A source close to the commission said its panel of experts, MPs and Lords would consider who to call from UBS to give evidence in due course.

UBS now needs to manage the financial fallout of its Libor fines, but according to a statement from the bank, and analysts, it is well placed.

“UBS said that, despite the hefty charge – which it said would drag the bank to a fourth quarter net loss of between Sfr2bn to Sfr2.5bn – the Swiss bank expected its “fully-applied Basel III common equity Tier 1 ratio” for the fourth quarter to be in line with its level of 9.3% in the third quarter. It said this was because it has been “making progress in risk-weighted assets reduction” over the last three months.”

In late October, UBS announced it was dramatically reducing its fixed-income unit. This meant offloading a vast balance sheet of fixed-income assets, with Sfr80bn of planned cuts from fixed-income, currencies and commodities.

Running down a Sfr80bn portfolio takes time. But it seems UBS is already well on its way. Lim said: “The implication is that if you have the same core Tier 1 ratio, then your RWAs must have fallen quite some way in the fourth quarter, perhaps around 10%.”

In a note published yesterday from Swiss rival Credit Suisse, analysts said: “We were expecting [a Basel III common equity Tier 1 ratio of] 9.1% before factoring in the restructuring charges and the group reported 9.3% in Q3, so this implies RWA deleveraging ahead of plan so far, with limited additional costs.

“This should give the market a little more confidence on the execution risks for the group and the scope for additional capital return in the future.”